TiktaalikDreaming

There's the 1972 handling guide online https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235040434_Fluorine_Systems_Handbook_Section_VI_Dynamic_Compatibility_of_Fluorine_with_Metals . The short version is some stainless aren't bad, but nickel super alloys are where it's at especially if you also need temperature resistance. And don't use Teflon, it's hypergolic. Most metals have erosion rates measured in mm per minute. Handling flox would be very similar, with a slightly lower rate of erosion.

Ha, yes, they need much smaller plumes, but I've only just started working with custom plumes. And you can store flox in inconel I think, even for a long time, but the other issues are nightmarish. I wouldn't be walking around outside after landing until after the first few rain storms, which could take a while on Mars

@Quoniam Kerman Replying without quoting because the mobile forum interface is awful. I definitely need to look into the nodes. That's crazy offset. Regarding the docking nodes, I'm half intending to deprecate the shrouded node, uncertain just yet. But I can say it didn't get any love on the last revamp, so won't really match the new parts on the top of the cabin. On the topic of the twr and dv, the real craft was intended to use a fairly nasty combo of liquid methane and FLOX, which is a mix of liquid oxygen and liquid fluorine. I checked some modern simulation systems recently and you can pretty easily get ISP values in the low 400s. Just at the cost of horrible toxicity and acidity (some of the exhaust will be hydrogen fluoride, thoughtfully mixed with water vapour). And on using mono (or anything) instead of solids for the deorbit. Pretty much anything will be better than srbs in ksp. The advantages of solid boosters are that they'll last, and reliably start when you want them, which is a moot point in ksp. Trading that for all the downsides, no throttling, no shut off, bad ISP, etc seems silly, esp when you're not preplanning down to the cm. But, for the mod I'm providing what was planned. Do I always use the SRB deorbit engines? No. But even when I do, I do kind of hate them.

I don't think I've seen an issue with the accent stage nodes. I don't suppose you have a screenshot? I can't think why they might go moving around. The shroud placement is a known issue. Basically each part can only have one symmetry set for stack nodes, so it doesn't matter if you select two way or eight way symmetry, when you go to attach, the symmetry will lock to the part's configured symmetry. The shrouds just need to be added one at a time. Right at the moment, I can't actually remember why it has four easy symmetry though. The base has six way because that's the only way to place the legs. But I can't remember why four way for where the shroud fits. I'll check the fitting of the male docking node. I sort of expected the female to go on the lander, so it's the one that I checked the fitting for. For all that the craft only really works with all the custom parts, I did try to get some diameters matching stock. I think that the ascent engine and the body section are both standard sizes.

That's awesome. Thanks heaps.

It's worth checking the parachute mesh is called "canopy", or bits of the code will base things off the fully open size. As far as I know this doesn't include drag though. So clearing out the old drag vibes should work.

I haven't had time to put these thoughts onto "paper" yet, so I'm writing this on mobile, on the bus, so it is likely going to be filled with quality autocorrections and inconsistent thought patterns, plus daft things the mobile version of the forum software does. Years ago, before 1.0 I started making some mod parts. At first, just to get a few bits to add to @nyrath 's Orion mod. As time went on, I learnt about the various factors in 3d modelling, as I was a complete noob. Eventually I did my first stock alike mod. Which was itself a challenge and taught me a lot about things like UVs that I'd been studiously ignoring. Time passed, I'm still making parts, although my spare time seems to have evaporated, and my benchmark of stock parts has become erratic, and I think I'm at the point where making things like stock is something that's behind me. I got better, but stock got (not necessarily worse) more erratic. There wasn't really one style to aim for, or a pixel density, or a polygon/vertex density. And along comes restock. It's full of really really well done parts, with consistent style and texture density, and frugal on vertices while looking expletively great. And, that's really great, it's a new benchmark. A new goal. The stock alike is dead. Long live restock alike.

Wow. Just wow.

I do actually want to make some small craft parts.

And some progress on the main engine.

Very nice. The variable extension will be pretty handy I imagine.

Props are different mu files, so separate imports. Then placing them would be based on the IVA's config, but the positions are all quaternian. And most of the asset IVAs are well populated. It's doable, but I think if rather just punch myself in the face.

I wanted to do a quick MER/Oppy/Spirit tribute. I had this scene mostly set-up as a showpiece for my ModPod mod. The lower section of the craft is my bits, the top pod is clearly Squad's Mk1-2 pod (yes that dates this), the legs, and the original lights* are also squad's. Scenery is a mash-up of actual Mars bits in a very amateur way. Oppy is from NASA's 3D archives with a bit of TLC to get it into Cycles.

Had a bit more time and added (some of the) colouring and a few details like the thrust structure

I decided to go back and make the control rocket nozzles look more like slightly truncated J-2 nozzles. Most of the plumbing has of course moved to the centre between nozzles, so they'll never really look like a J-2, but I figured I could at least copy the bell that shows. I'll be using normals for horizontal ribbing in the top section, and for cooling pipes between the bands in the lower section. The other obvious visual difference is I took out the gas generator exhaust from getting piped into the nozzle. Even though it's a feature of everything Saturn, it doesn't make a lot of sense for a cluster, or for rockets that are providing assist to a main engine. It adds a couple of percent for a massive increase in complexity (which would be even worse in a cluster) and I think it's telling that it's not a feature that's turned up on many other rockets. If you have truck loads of money, and you want all the performance, sure. But you're better off chasing closed cycle, which isn't even that awful with LH2.

It's been a while. I've been putting off going back and doing an art pass on this mod as I also want to resize it. When I started modding, I did things at 50% scale, which I've discovered is basically not going to match anyone else's stuff. So I'll be aiming at redoing this in 62.5%. The Gas Core NTR above is still heading this way, and I've started on redoing some other parts. Some (untextured) progress on the control rocket cluster, And some more developed work on the first stage tankage, Wow, not sure how I missed this. Short answer is no. The Nexus is a very Hydrogen design. I'm actually going to remove the stock fuel variants and just include a stockish liquid hydrogen resource for people without CRP in the upcoming revamp. The whole structure, design, proportions of the thing are directly resulting from the joys and tribulations of dealing with liquid hydrogen. It just doesn't make sense with a denser fuel like the stock kerosene or hydrozine analogue. AKA I don't think it's suitable for SMURFF unless there's an established way of dealing with hydrogen craft for SMURFF. I will be honest and say I have no idea how/if smurff deals with "real stats" + "stock fuel" + "liquid Hydrogen irl".

As far as I care, that's nothing funny happening. There's no icon, so "?". There's no description so no tooltip. Taniwha has a mod you can use to assign the icon etc if you're desperate.

Just as a side note. The game only has its issue of there's no bulkhead profile for a part. It doesn't care if the profile is matching anything. So you can use that patch, but have something like "null" instead of "srf", and you have an easy way of spotting the problem parts.

There's no real issue with most of the colliders checking them out in DebugStuff by Sarbian, but I've finally spotted the issue with the Interstage decoupler. It's using completely the wrong mesh from the one showing in Unity. It's exported with a collider of the shape of the ascent fuel tank. Also, to try fixing it, I kept shrinking it on the vertical axis, and it's totally not shrunk at all. I had trouble finding the collider because I thought I'd selected the fuel tank. And here's the part in Unity I can see what happened though, that flat cylinder is copied off the cylinder from the fuel tank and squished. Seems it got unsquished when exporting to mu file. I'm now running late for work, so there's no re-package just yet. But if you replace the part by replacing the mu file from https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/NAR_MEM/tree/master/Parts/MarsExcursionModuleStage/Interstage it should fix that particular horror.

I'm on my phone, so I'll just give a short answer for now. You seem to be having a lot of collider issues. Some of them I know of, like the interstage, which I keep shrinking on the z axis. But some are weird. I'm not sure when I'll have time at my pc to check it out. It sounds like I'll need to get the old debugstuff mod out and show colliders. As far as I know, there's no significant changes to collider behaviour going from 1.2 through 1.6, except for wheels and legs. The side panels sound like pre unity 5 concave colliders. Which was ksp 1.1 or maybe even 1.0. And yes, the bent tunnel is hilariously bad.

In order. The interstage decoupler: It's a pig. I've tried all sorts of things, including the tweaks you mentioned. The issue is it *should* encase the ascent stage a bit, but doing that causes lots of issues. And not doing that causes other issues. The offset CoM isn't *THAT* bad. I always thought it was going to cause me heaps of grief when I was working on getting the craft ready to fly, but in practice it's a bit annoying, and means I strategically drain and ditch external tanks to centre it during ascent. But otherwise isn't too bad. Keep in mind that I haven't nerfed the ISP figures, and the delta-V is going to be excessive for Duna landings. It does tend to end up scooting sideways a bit during landing, but for the last bit I tend to use the over-powered RCS for countering that with translation. Re-entry ablator: It's there because according to every source, it needs to be there, but in my experience, Duna and Mars in RO/RSS, you don't really need it. You can start popping the chutes at about mach 3, which is almost as soon as you enter the atmosphere in stock Duna landings. The orbital speeds and the thin atmosphere just doesn't seem to lead to a lot of heating. Obviously, it's nastier in RSS/RO, but the amount of heating that happens, even without ablator, is pretty minimal. Legs cutting chutes: I have never before experienced that, nor had reports of that. 10 out of 10 for the workaround, but wot??? That's definitely something I'll need to take a closer look at. It might be a strange interaction between ksp versions and specific MEM versions. Where did you get the mod? Spacedock or Github? And do you know what version? I'll double check I didn't leave anything in a half baked dev state. And double check it in 1.4.5. There was a version between working legs way back when KSP changed all the wheel/leg modules, but that was like 1.1 or 1.2 or something. I think I just did animated parts then, no suspension. But since 1.3 it *should* be OK again. RE: Diversifying. This mod exists pretty much as a historical oddity. There's some others with much later (and better) NASA plans like Mars Direct (no idea if that's what the mod's called). But the North American MEM was the first serious design after NASA discovered just how thin the atmosphere was, and served as the basis for the next 20 to 30 years of both Mars mission planning and the more researched fiction about such things. And what I really wanted to capture was how, although it would work, it was pretty horrifying for anyone on board. The offset CoM is what mostly comes through in KSP, as there's no way of including the horrors of FLOX. It's really a very early go at how humans would get to Mars.

I'm not 100% on it scaling joint strength. I did tests on surface attach nodes a few versions back, and the joint rigidity seemed to relate to the intersecting collider surface area more than the node size. Stack nodes "should" work more like what's on the tin, and scale strength with node size though. I haven't actually tested. If it didn't scale, I imagine some of my rockets would be pretty horribly floppy.

Yeah. I scale my node sizes as well. Sticking to roughly diameter/1.25m

Awesome. I have done mods with large bulkhead sizes that really shouldn't be listed with surface attachable.

Has anyone tried non standard bulkhead profiles?